


The Life and Times of Clinton Francis Barton

by NotLikeYouThink



Series: Timeless >>> One-Shots [3]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Assassins, Clint Barton Needs a Break, Clint Barton-centric, Coulson Won't Give Him One, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Death, Doesn't Really Follow Comic Canon, Five And One, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotLikeYouThink/pseuds/NotLikeYouThink
Summary: Clint Barton may have been stubborn, but SHIELD was persistent. And they wouldn’t let a potential ally go.Or, five times Clint Barton evaded SHIELD and the one time SHIELD caught him.





	The Life and Times of Clinton Francis Barton

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and reviewing! I'm actually really proud of this, because Clint's my favourite Avenger, and I wanted to give him justice. I think I did.

The first time Clinton Francis Barton evaded SHIELD was when he was fifteen, days after escaping the circus, leaving his dead brother behind him. He was still battered and bruised, his bow clutched in his hand, hiding out in an abandoned building on the edge of Waverley.

When they came for him, he thought it was police, or the circus, or worse, child services. That night, he slept behind a dumpster, joints aching and cold, just to avoid detection.

He fled Waverley the day afterwards, heading east. He didn’t know if they would follow him.

**————**

The second time SHIELD came for him, a year later, he had already become a mercenary. Sixteen years old, with aim that could rival the best sharpshooter in the US military, and he took lives for money. So he could live.

They came for him in the middle of a job. His employer had been skeptical of him because of his age and his choice of weapon, but after assurance that it would be done, they gave him the money and sent him on his merry way.

He spied the target—a wealthy businessman that had taken Clint’s current employer out of a deal—and pulled back on the string of his bow, kneeling on the roof of the building next to the one he was in, and marked the trajectory for his arrow.

Through the window, and piercing his heart. That was the way he was going to do it.

He let out a breath, and let go of the string. It sailed through the air, crashing through the window and plunging itself into the businessman’s chest. Red started to appear on his white shirt, and faint screams hit Clint’s ears as the man fell to the ground, the woman he was in a meeting with jumping up from her chair in shock.

It was always satisfying when his arrows hit their mark.

The woman fell to her knees above the body as the door swung open. Clint narrowed his eyes at the man that walked through, then widened them when he realised he recognised him.

With short brown hair and brown eyes, dressed in an immaculate suit, it was the same man that had chased him down in Waverley the year before.

Clint packed his bow up and turned around, heading for the roof entrance as the man’s eyes landed on him, and he pressed something in his ear.

Clint threw the door open and started descending the stairs, stopping halfway down to the top floor when a woman in a bluish-black catsuit stepped out in front of him.

“I need you to come with me.”

He vaulted over the banister of the stairwell and onto the steps below the woman. She growled at him and gave chase, him leading the way down to the bottom floor.

He left the stairwell and then the building, jumping onto a motorbike he had hidden for a quick getaway that may or may not be stolen. He jammed in the keys, revved the engine, and screamed down the roads of Chicago, leaving the city immediately.

**————**

When SHIELD came a third time, he knew what they were. A secret organisation bent on making him a child soldier. But that wouldn’t help much, seeing as how he was now nineteen, and was legally an adult.

But still they followed him.

He had managed to avoid them for three years, flying under the radar, only speaking to those he needed to.

Somehow, they found him again.

He was in a small town in Montana, drinking in the middle of a pub, when hands planted themselves onto the bar next to him.

He looked up and saw the brown-haired man looking down at him.

“Hello, Clint.”

“What do you want with me?”

The man sat down on the stool next to him, and Clint glanced over as the same woman leaned on the bar, her eyes scanning the rest of the room.

“We just want to talk.”

“About SHIELD?” Clint asked. “I know what you are. And I’m not going to be one of your soldiers.”

“Agents,” the man said. “We protect the world by keeping what it doesn’t need to know a secret.”

Clint glared over at him. “Why should I believe you?”

He kept a cool, calm face. He had been doing this a long time.

“You don’t have to. But know that if your… mercenary job falls through, you have a job with us.” He pulled a card out of the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out for Clint. “When you decide to, call me.”

He grabbed the card and glanced at it. It was a bluish-black, much like the woman’s catsuit, with a gray hawk stamped on it. In white letters along the top it read, ‘Strategic Homeland Intervention: Enforcement Logistics Division’, with a number in the middle. It didn’t have a name on it.

Without saying anything else, the two ‘agents’ left the bar.

As soon as Clint got home, he shredded the card.

He didn’t need them. He didn’t need anyone.

**————**

“You’re a persistent piece of shit, I’ll give you that,” Clint said, glaring at the man out the front of his home. “But you’re still a piece of shit.”

The man chuckled, a small smile appearing on his face. “I’m just here to check up on you. It’s been a while since I gave you that card.”

It had been two years and five months, to be exact. Not that he had been counting. He was twenty-one, now, and the deal that was given to him—if he could call it that—seemed sweeter every passing day. More and more, he regretted shredding that card, but he was too proud to admit it.

But now that the agent was standing in front of him, his disposition was back to what it was when he was sixteen. He wanted them to give up. _He_ wanted to move out of Florida and somewhere more west. Maybe even Canada.

“I must have misplaced it,” he said, jaw square. He wasn’t going to give up on his position, because he was as stubborn as they came, and refused to be used again.

The agent hummed. “No matter. I have another one here.” He began reaching into his jacket to grab another card, no doubt already knowing what had happened to the first.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

He stopped, then sighed. “You have a particular skillset SHIELD can use. And SHIELD will give you more opportunities. Let you see the world and meet new people.”

“So I can kill them?”

“We do more than just kill, and that’s only those that deserve it.”

“What makes you decide who lives and who dies?”

“I’d ask you the same question.”

They stood there in silence for a couple minutes, tension filling the air around them. When it became too much to bear, Clint turned on his heel.

“Leave me alone.”

He started walking off, he didn’t know where.

The agent let him.

**————**

The fifth time Clint met SHIELD was an accident, no matter how much the latter said it was.

Clint was on a job, only three months after that encounter out the front of his apartment, in Detroit. He was to kill a thug’s boss, because the guy wanted out of the mafia, and it just so happened that he had been on SHIELD’s radar as well.

The agent that had found him the previous four times wasn’t there, but the woman was. Just as Clint was about to take the shot and sever the mafia boss’s jugular, the woman burst into the room and started kicking ass. He had been too stunned to do anything for a couple seconds, and by the time he did, a lot of the goons were already down.

He pulled back on the string and let it fire. It crashed through glass and hit the boss in the neck, just like he planned.

The woman jerked around, turning to the now-broken skylight, and grinned at him before going back to kick ass, this time helped by Clint.

When they were all either dead or indisposed, their target dead, they convened on the roof of the building Clint had been on. She thanked him for helping.

“No problem,” he said. “Honestly, I was hired to kill him too.”

She ran her eyes up and down his body. “You have good aim. I can see why Coulson wants you to join.”

“I have _great_ aim,” he teased, a grin on his face. But on the inside, he was thrilled at learning the agent’s name. Now he didn’t have to call him ‘agent’ whenever he thought about him. Or bitched about SHIELD to Kate.

“You know he’s not going to take no as an answer, right?” she asked him, an eyebrow raised.

The grin only grew. “I implore him to try.”

**————**

The sixth time SHIELD and the agent, Coulson, as he had learned a year earlier, met him, it really wasn’t a point for them, at least in Clint’s book.

Because he was lying on a bed in the middle of a hospital, with eighty percent hearing loss.

He had been in an explosion, which really wasn’t as cool as it looked like in movies, and his eardrums or whatever made him hear had been permanently damaged in it.

It was strange, not being able to hear. He saw the EKG moving with his heartbeat, but he couldn’t hear the insistent beeping that accompanied it. The doctor had been communicating to him via whiteboards, and it was honestly starting to get annoying.

It was then that Coulson walked in, the woman stalking in behind him.

He picked up the whiteboard that was hanging at the end of his bed, wrote on it, and turned it to Clint.

_I know you’re deaf now. We can help_.

“Fuck off,” he muttered, probably too loud, probably extremely slurred. He could feel himself talk, but he couldn’t hear it. That was something he’d have to get used to. “I’m not in the mood for you to sprout your crap about SHIELD.”

Coulson turned the whiteboard back around, used the eraser to rub it out, and wrote on it again before showing it to him.

_SHIELD can help. They can rehabilitate you and teach you to shoot while deaf._

“I don’t need you to do that, I’ll do it myself.”

_We can give you hearing aids and teach you sign language._

“You’re just using my condition as leverage,” he said, knowing full well that he was shouting. “You should be ashamed.”

But there was a joking tone to his voice—at least, he hoped. In truth, he was getting tired of trying to shake them off. He was twenty-three, for God’s sake, and he was _tired_. Tired of having to wait for a new contract to be able to pay bills. Tired of having to steal and kill those that didn’t deserve it.

In truth, he had been waiting to see the two agents again, so he could drop his facade and just accept the offer.

He knew his intent came through when Coulson smiled. He wiped away the words on the board and wrote some more.

_I’ll make sure you get transferred to SHIELD’s hospital. Be lucky we’re in New York._

And for the first time since he got there, he was.


End file.
